Just yesterday in fact I installed Win8 Pro x86 on a 2gb Compaq mini PC with a 1.6ghz Atom 230 (a netbook in a box if you like) and I'm really surprised how fast it is because with Win7 it was a pathetic dog !

In any case as long as you don't go online and activate it there is nothing to stop you installing Win8 to experiment with.

TBH ram is very cheap and there is little reason not to upgrade your netbook to 2gb.

While MS states that the 32-bit version will work with 1GB of RAM, I suspect that is the "little-fun" level. Any modern version of Windows (or any OS for that matter) will benefit from additional memory. I suggest you increase your machine to 2GB (or better) if you want to really do much with it (assuming the machine will take more RAM).

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